Archive for News
Uh, yeah … uh, um, possibly
Posted by: | CommentsGoldman’s rigging online polls, now?
From the Telegraph of London on Thursday:
Goldman Sachs is investigating claims that one of its computers was used to rig a public vote on the introduction of a so-called “Robin Hood tax” on bankers.
From Business Insider on Friday:
A few days ago robinhoodtax.com, asked the public to vote on a “tiny” tax on bankers that would donate no more than .05% of each banking transaction to the poor.
[...]
Robin Hood’s security team said that it traced the erroneous votes to two computers, one of which is allegedly registered to Goldman, according to The Telegraph.
From the Digby on Sunday:
Unbelievable. Why in the hell are people entrusting all this power to such a bunch of babies?
On the other hand, if they are forced to pay a .05% tax on transactions it goes without saying that they’ll all hold their breath until they turn blue because it just won’t be worth it to work anymore. And then where will we be?
It seems that somebody at the great vampire squid isn’t too keen on the idea of the banks that brought the world economy to its knees owing anything to the commoners who bailed them out. It’s not a European notion they’d like to see spread to the U.S.
Tell us again how that personal responsibility stuff is supposed to work, how about it?
[h/t Crooks and Liars]
Homecoming Job Fair Tomorrow
Posted by: | CommentsFrom the Asheville Chamber’s website:
The Economic Development Coalition and the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce partner annually with numerous workforce and industry allies to promote employment opportunities in advanced manufacturing, health care, and other growth industries in Western North Carolina. Residents, students, graduates, former residents, and friends and family visiting over the holidays are encouraged to attend this one-stop opportunity to meet directly with representatives from companies who are hiring, will be hiring in 2010, or who would like to have a presence to promote awareness of their company to potential future employees..
Tuesday December 29, 2009
10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Biltmore Square Mall, Brevard Road, Asheville
Why Do The People Charged With Attracting Jobs Still Have Theirs?
Posted by: | CommentsAsheville Volvo plant closing
SKYLAND — A plant where workers have built heavy construction equipment since 1977 will shut down, leaving 228 people out of work in a time of scarce manufacturing jobs.
Know any federal/state/local officials you can nag about helping thousands of North Carolinians find work?
Corporate Ventriloquism
Posted by: | Comments(Update 1 & 2 below)
Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake had a dustup a few weeks ago with Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) over an amendment to H.R. 3200 that Eshoo sponsored governing the licensing of biologic drugs. Hamsher, a three-time breast cancer survivor, contended that a loophole allowed manufacturers to extend their twelve-year exclusive license to drugs by making minor tweaks to the molecules.
Eshoo got testy about being called out, saying, “My amendment prohibits by its plain language exactly what Ms. Hamsher alleges it would encourage.” But other experts contended that Eshoo didn’t understand the “plain language” of her own amendment, that it said just the opposite of what she thought. Also, Energy and Commerce chair Henry Waxman’s statements supported Jane’s contention that the provision contained a loophole that allowed Big Pharma to “evergreen” its exclusive licenses to biologic medications.
This morning, Marcy Wheeler pointed to an NYT piece describing the pushback from Big Pharma. They worked at getting congresscritters from both sides of the aisle to enter their talking points into the Congressional Record:
Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.
E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.
[snip]
Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists.
[snip]
Members of Congress submit statements for publication in the Congressional Record all the time, often with a decorous request to “revise and extend my remarks.” It is unusual for so many revisions and extensions to match up word for word. It is even more unusual to find clear evidence that the statements originated with lobbyists.
It would be nice to see those e-mails, by the way. It makes you wonder who wrote the “plain language” for Eshoo’s anti-evergreening amendment.
(Full disclosure: This writer has had Roche as a client.)
UPDATE: Marcy did some digging into this story through the day. Someone you know got busted:
As the NYT reported earlier today, Genentech/Roche wrote a Republican script and a Democratic script for its parrots to enter into the Congressional Record. Here’s what the Republican script looks like (I’m going to try to do the Democratic one next–but this is tedious stuff; and yes, Heath Shuler was working from the Republican script).
I’ve met Marcy a couple of times. She’s so sharp, it’s scary.
UPDATE 2: And here come the Democrats. And, uh, it ain’t pretty.
Question: What does a taxpaying non-lobbyist have to do to get his or her own pre-scripted statement entered into the Congressional Record? Is the Congressional Record like the Raleigh-based American Biographical Institute that invites you (for between $195 and $495) to be listed in its Who’s Who-like publication? Or maybe like the International Star Registry? Do I have to call before noon tomorrow?
Not Exactly the Mercury Theatre on the Air
Posted by: | CommentsAt least the damage was minimal, Frank Rich suggests in this morning’s New York Times. It’s not as if the “balloon boy” fraud led the country into invading a sovereign country in search of nonexistent WMDs, or into investing in dot-coms with no business plans, or into buying oversized homes with no-income no-asset loans.
But “balloon boy” is this generation’s “War of the Worlds” hoax, Rich believes, “the inevitable product of this reigning culture, where ‘news,’ ‘reality’ television and reality itself are hopelessly scrambled” — a culture in which media snake oil salesmen are as likely to be suckered as their audiences, if not more so.
Rich observes,
As “balloon boy” played out, the White House opened fire on one purveyor of fictional news, Fox News, where “tea party” protests are inflated into a national rebellion rivaling the Civil War and where Glenn Beck routinely claims Obama is perpetrating a conspiracy to bring fascism to America. But the White House’s argument is diluted by the different, if less malevolently partisan, fictions that turn up on Fox’s competitors. On CNN, for instance, Lou Dobbs provided a platform for the nuts questioning Obama’s citizenship. When an ABC News correspondent insisted that Fox was “one of our sister organizations” in an exchange with the president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, last week, he wasn’t joking.
Not that anyone around him would have gotten it if he were.
We’re Number Last!
Posted by: | CommentsFactCheck.org sent out one of its regular e-mail updates this week. They examine the “37th in the world” statistic bandied about in the health reform debate. The 2000 World Health Organization report has not been updated, they note, and has its critics and limitations.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center looks at some more recent figures to put things in perspective:
Among the other stats on how the U.S. health care system and health stacks up internationally: A 2007 Commonwealth Fund report ranked the U.S. last out of six industrialized countries in health system performance, which included measures on quality, access, efficiency, equity of care and healthy lives. “Access” and “equity” measures are affected by the lack of universal health care. On life expectancy, the U.S. ranks 50th and below France, Canada, the U.K. and the European Union average, according to the CIA World Factbook. Infant mortality is also higher in the U.S. than all of those countries and more. A 2006 report on infant mortality by the nonprofit Save the Children showed the U.S. tied for next to last among industrialized countries.
America retains its #1 ranking on health care costs, spending nearly twice as much, on average, as other developed countries. But when it comes to health care, Wal-Mart Nation still pays more and gets less. And for reform opponents, that’s a record worth defending, even if it’s not something to brag about.
EPA to Cap DDT Hot Spot in Palos Verdes Superfund Site
Posted by: | Comments
The EPA plans to spend $50 million on a project that will “cap” or cover a hot spot within a DDT laden ocean deposit off the Palos Verdes Peninsula near Los Angeles. The Palos Verdes Shelf was made an official EPA Superfund site in 1996. The accumulation of DDT on the ocean floor was found to be largely the result of actions by Montrose Chemical Company which dumped an estimated 1800 metric tons through the LA County Sanitation District’s sewer system between 1947 and 1971. The complicit sanitation district had its share of culpability. To this day, the DDT ocean deposit sits and leeches into the nearby environment. The catastrophic effects on wildlife such as fish and birds that Rachel Carson observed in 1962’s Silent Spring can be observed on the nearby Channel Islands as if the last discharge took place only recently instead of nearly forty years ago.
There used to be a healthy population of bald eagles on Santa Catalina Island and Southern California. But human over settlement and DDT caused the region’s population to crash. They were literally extirpated from the Channel Islands by the early 1960’s due almost exclusively to DDT. Since 1980, an effort to restore the bald eagle to the islands has met with some success. However, it has taken extraordinary human effort, constant intervention and of course money. In the fall of 2007, the first unaided eagle hatch occured on Santa Catalina since the 1940’s. This is a sign of hope, but not victory. Really, the only thing holding the species back is that plume of DDT that just won’t go away. Read More→
Chamber Update: Apple Quits
Posted by: | Comments
A recent post noted some high profile defections from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its staunch opposition to regulating Carbon emissions. Yesterday, Apple announced it would resign from the Chamber effective immediately. This is the first major consumer brand to quit and the first Silicon Valley company to quit. Let’s hope not the last. Many companies are greening their operations and incorporating this greenshine into their brand image. Apple is expanding their brand image by characteristically innovating the way we define ‘environmental impact‘ for companies. It just doesn’t make sense for companies who are embracing the future to belong to an organization so beholden to the past.
[Disclosure: I own two Apple products, paid for by myself, and have recently exited a small position in their stock which again consisted entirely of my own money. I am not a celebrity and I'm not being paid for this post, so take that FTC!]
TEDx-Asheville Live-blog
Posted by: | CommentsPaul “brainshrub” Van Heden was invited to live-blog from the TEDx-Asheville event. You can join the conversation in real-time within the chat window below, which goes active at 6:30 EST, or follow his tweets at #brainshrub.
TEDx coverage starts at 6:30pm EST.
P.S.: You can also get the chat window at TheMap.com and Climateinteractive.wordpress.com.
Apollo 11 Forty Years Later: Thank You
Posted by: | CommentsThe history continues to be written, the stories continue to inspire us, and the yearning to take flight to the stars never dies. For all those involved in the Apollo program and our space program generally, we Hooligans thank you.
